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Wuhan lab samples hold no close relatives to virus behind Covid


Shi Zhengli, the virologist at centre of COVID lab-leak theory, reveals coronavirus sequences from Wuhan institute.

“We didn’t find any new sequences which are more closely related to SARS-CoV-1 and SARS-CoV-2,” said Shi, in a pre-recorded presentation at the conference, Preparing for the Next Pandemic: Evolution, Pathogenesis and Virology of Coronaviruses, in Awaji, Japan, on 4 December. The results support her assertion that the WIV lab did not have any bat-derived sequences from viruses that were more closely related to SARS-CoV-2 than were any already described in scientific papers, says Jonathan Pekar, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Edinburgh, UK. For decades, Shi collaborated with Peter Daszak, president of the EcoHealth Alliance, a New York City-based non-profit organization, to survey bats in southern China for coronaviruses and study their risk to humans.

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